DHS Secure Flight program finally ready to take off

The DHS is set to take over watch list responsibilities from airlines but for …

The long-in-limbo Secure Flight program, which will put the Transportation Security Administration in charge of screening airline passengers against terrorist watch-lists, is finally set for a January launch, the Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday. An earlier incarnation of the program was killed in 2006 after a government analysis found its privacy safeguards inadequate and, while the current version is substantially slimmed down, many privacy advocates harbor lingering concerns.

Currently, individual airlines are responsible for checking their passenger manifests against "selectee" and "no fly" lists that designate some travelers for special scrutiny and bar a smaller number from boarding a plane at all. When the first phase of Secure Flight kicks off early next year, they'll instead forward the name, gender, and birthdate of each domestic flyer to the TSA for scrutiny. Phase two, slated to be in place by the end of 2009, will fold in international flights.

In part, Secure Flight is being touted as a way to cut down on the mismatches and false positives that have plagued air travelers—including such suspicious characters as Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA)—since the attacks of September 11. "Secure Flight is a critical tool that will further improve aviation security and fix the major customer service issue of watch list misidentifications, a frustratingly common occurrence for travelers under the existing airline-based system," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in a statement this week. Under the new rules, passengers who've been mismatched once will at least be able to show TSA personnel that they've been cleared if the problem arises again by using a special redress number.

The secretary also revealed, however, that the airline watch lists were far smaller than had previously been estimated. According to Chertoff, the "selectee" list holds only about 16,000 names, most of whom are foreigners. The "no-fly" list is smaller still, at about 2,500 names, and Chertoff estimated that only a tenth of those are American citizens.

The current version Secure Flight is the latest in a long line of controversial federal screening programs, and each of its predecessors has gone down in a blaze of ignominy. There was the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS), and its offspring, CAPPS II, both of which fell under the shadow of scandal after it came out that airlines had improperly shared detailed passenger data with the government while the system was being tested. Secure Flight 1.0 soon followed, but the feds' own watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, concluded that the TSA's privacy safeguards fell short.

The American Civil Liberties Union has acknowledged that the present version of the program represents a substantial improvement over its precursors, and hailed the decision to ditch previous plans to gather data from commercial databases for the purpose of conducting background checks on passengers. But Senior Legislative Counsel Tim Sparapani worried that even the revamped program would lead to "far too many mistakes and burdens for those travelers whose only crime is that their name is similar to somebody whom the government thinks is suspicious."

Jim Harper, privacy point man at the libertarian Cato Institue, was even more critical. "Secure Flight is a shocking waste of time and money," Harper told Ars."Secure Flight is Swiss cheese gone bad. It should be tossed in the trash."

According to Harper, new security measures onboard planes—such as hardened cockpit doors—already make it highly unlikely that terrorists could repeat the commandeering of aircraft that made the 9/11 attacks possible. But if attackers are determined to board planes, he says, identity-based systems like Secure Flight are easily bypassed by forged boarding passes or the use of "clean skin" operatives who aren't yet on the government's radar.

Harper also remains unconvinced by new privacy measures, such as a pledge to discard information about innocent passengers after a week. "The Department of Homeland Security is free to share it with other government agencies, but it will not give citizens access to data about themselves under the Privacy Act," he said. "Statements that the Department of Homeland Security will hold this data for short periods are worth less than the paper they’re printed on."

The new program is still awaiting a clean bill of health from GAO, and DHS officials have said they'll hold off on implementing Secure Flight until the agency completes its audit.